2. The emancipation of Clara continues! She and Danny continue to cutely date/date cutely, demonstrating that there are in fact some things more interesting than adventures with the Doctor (not that the Doctor would agree). For the first time in a long time (heck, perhaps even the first time), the Doctor is vying for his Companion’s attention, and I suspect that Clara is going to be our first Companion since Martha to leave his company of her own volition.
And again, I know some aren’t fond of the current system that Clara/the Doctor have going, with the latter popping in on Clara at arbitrary times during her routine life, but I think it makes a nice change of pace than the continual travelling loop. (Plus, it looks like they’re addressing the strain of this lifestyle in the next episode).
A recording on the table plays back their own voices, each one agreeing to a memory wipe of their own free will, and a computer screen introduces them to the Bank of Karabraxos, a high-security facility that they’ve all agreed to rob. As premises go, it’s pretty rock solid.
4. Keeley Hawes! Love this lady, and here she fulfils the grand Doctor Who tradition of bringing in well-respected British actors to chew on the scenery for an episode or so. As Miss Delphox she’s brisk and precise and crisp, even whilst ordering the execution of a client, whilst still hinting at a modicum of fear behind her perfect façade.
As Director Karabraxos she oozes entitlement and superiority, but with a sense of self-satisfaction and calm that’s wholly missing from her clone. It’s difficult to pin-point exactly where in the body language and general demeanour these differences lie – but then that’s what an accomplish actor does.
5. The Teller – get it? Because it’s a play on bank teller and a teller of the truth? Yes, that's a Moffatism if ever there was one, but the design of this alien was beautifully realized. I’m guessing elaborate prosthetics as opposed to CGI (though it’s hard to tell these days), which gave it a sense of really being there, free to threaten and interact with the other characters.
And of course, this only heightened the poignancy when it came to the true reason behind the bank heist. It doesn’t even matter that the whole thing was a retelling of Hide (there a ghost story became a love story in which an alien couple were reunited, here it’s a bank heist becoming a rescue mission for another alien couple to reunite) as by the end of the episode we’re oddly invested in what happens to the dangerous monster whose abilities are clearly being used against its will. 6. The heist itself. Any good heist story relies on making overwhelming obstacles surmountable in ways that are cleverer than the obstacles themselves. In this case Team Not-Dead’s biggest challenge was the Teller, a creature that could sniff out guilt – thus requiring the memory wipe that starts the whole adventure. (But what if a sociopath broke in?)
There are other clever gadgets to be utilized, such as a dimensional shift bomb and “exit strategy” vials (presumed to be futuristic suicide pills; actually teleporters, begging the question of why there aren’t bank security measures in place to prevent the use of them) as well as a final twist when a massive storm short-circuits the computer system and the Doctor realizes that the Architect must be a time-traveller, scheduling the heist at the exact moment a storm hits (though surely there’s enough futuristic technology out there to actually generate a storm like this at will).
Okay, so as you can see there are a couple of plot holes, but justification can be inferred and there’s only so far you’re allowed to go with nit-picking. It hangs together, with exposition delivered as we go and swift pacing that slides over any bad logistics.
7. The guest stars, Psi and Saibra. Granted, there’s simply not enough time to make them truly memorable, but they are given nifty abilities and strong motivation to participate in the heist, with incentives that are revealed over the course of the episode. For Psi it’s getting his memories back – apparently he was arrested at some point in his past and deleted everything he knew about his family to protect them. All he knows now is: “I suppose I must have loved them.”
Meanwhile, Saibra can transform her body into anyone she touches, making her a master of disguise but preventing her from forming any permanent attachments. Basically she's an amalgamation of Rogue and Mystique from X-Men, and according to her: “could you trust someone who looked at you out of your own eyes?” Personally I’d have thought intimacy issues would be the bigger problem here, but her lonely introspection plugs neatly into the episode’s denouement.
8. Somewhere between the Doctor’s claim that he hates the Architect and Director Karabraxos’s tendency to incinerate her own clones, lies the conclusion that it’s the self-loathing Doctor himself who is the Architect. He gives Karabraxos his phone number as she makes a hasty exit, thus kick-starting a good old time-travelling loop.
In her old age she becomes filled with regret, calls the Doctor with a plea for help in righting an old wrong: to free the Teller’s mate from her vault. From there it’s simple work for a time traveller to gather a team, organise the necessary tools, and decide on the most advantageous time to slip inside the bank.
9. Although it’s never explicit, the “good man” question lingers over this episode. The Doctor throwing Saibra what he thought was a suicide pill was a dark turn, as was tricking a soldier a few episodes ago into swallowing a tracking device in the hope that it would protect him when the Doctor knew he was doomed anyway.And yet this season’s theme of whether or not the Doctor is a good man seems to be based on Moffat’s fundamental inability to differentiate between goodness and niceness. Much like Moffat’s Sherlock, this Doctor is not a particularly nice man, specifically in regards to his lack of empathy and his dislike of hugs.
But anyone can be nice, even cold-blooded serial killers. All that involves is outward inoffensiveness. It’s the reason the trope Affably Evil exists. “Niceness” is not that big a deal, though its existence in villainous characters has no doubt led to more than one impassioned on-line manifesto that insists any murderer, rapist, drug-dealer or other unsavoury individual who contains a hint of charisma is just misunderstood.
It’s goodness that is the rare quality in a human being, and even this comes in varying degrees. In this case, Saibra identifies the Doctor as a good man when he refuses to promise her that he’ll kill the Architect, rather annoyingly giving him credit for the most rudimentary of all principles upon which we collectively base our understanding of “goodness”: the refusal to take a life.
And yet, we are told that everyone involved in the heist is doing so to get what they truly want out of it, and for the Doctor this is saving a species from extinction and helping a thoroughly unpleasant woman achieve some degree of redemption. There is a grace and nobility in that, as both a goal and a motivation, that answers the Doctor’s question for him.
But since he regularly insults Clara I guess we’re going to have to ruminate over whether rudeness jeopardises the inherent goodness of a man for a while longer.
10. Speaking of goals and motivations, The Wizard of Oz ending in which everyone gets what they were longing for was incredibly sweet, whether it’s Psi’s memories or Saibra’s antidote or the Doctor’s wish to repopulate a species or Clara’s satisfaction at a job well done.
11. “Shuttity up.” I knew they’d get a Malcolm Tucker reference in there somewhere.
12. One irritating plot-hole lingers. If the Doctor wants to know who this mysterious “woman in the shop” is, why doesn’t he – you know – just ask Clara what shop she was in??
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